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The examples were all wrong (I have changed them), and so are most or all French dictionaries, because the [j]-like offglide must be written separately. It is not contained within the symbol [ɲ]. The same applies to all other palatal consonants, like [c].
I don't know the mentioned Slavic languages, so I've left them untouched apart from entering [j], but others (Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovenian) have the palatalized [nʲ] rather than the palatal [ɲj͡] (note: I'm not sure how correct this spelling is -- but it's in any case better than [ɲ] alone). Are you sure this is different in the others? I also wonder about Finnish...
An Occitan and a Vietnamese example would be great (written nh in both).
Edit 01:26: Now I get it! I have to put
{ { I P A | } }
around the [] or // to force Internet Explorer to use Arial Unicode MS!
Hey, I'm writing from Brazil. I would like to inform that the word anho does not mean year. Instead, it means something like lamb.
Ano would be the proper word for year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulroxx (talk • contribs) 03:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)Reply
Is it just me or the portuguese "nh" is not a palatal nasal but a palatalized alveolar nasal? By the way i'm changing the word anho, because i am a native european portuguese speaker and "anho" rarely used word.
By the way, maybe portuguese language shouldnt even be here because i really think we have a palatalized alveolar nasal.
Edit: In fact when i do it, it's more like palatalized post-alveolar or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raydred (talk • contribs) 23:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Polish <ń> is alveopalatal, the same as <ć>, <dź>, <ś> and <ź>. It differs from both Spanish palatal nasal and Russian palatalized dental nasal.
For unknown reason, IPA lacks the appropriate symbol for alveopalatal nasal, however it is present in Unicode 4.0. (U+0235). It looks like "n" with curled leg: ȵ (you will not be able to see anything here unless you have a good unicode font - Arial Unicode MS has not the proper glyph unfortunately but Code2000orTITUS Cyberbit Basic are OK).
I suggest to make a page for the alveopalatal nasal.
But an alveolopalatal is simply a palatalized postalveolar; there's no more call for a special article than there is for any other palatalized consonant. kwami22:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
There will be no palatal nasal in Polish word "słońce", because of the following consonant, the alveolar africate, which changes the pronunciation of such clusters written <ńc>. The fenomena to happen here is called in Polish "rozsunięcie artykulacyjne". I don't know the English equivalent. Literally it means "articulatory drawing aside", and it is changing, otherwise pronounced [ɲ], to a cluster [j~n] . So the Polish word『słońce』('sun') would be actually pronounced: [swoj~ntsɛ]. That's why I've changed the example to『słoń』('elephant').
I believe the term in English is "place of assimilation." Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildas (~~~~). The link you provide does not go to your user page or talk page. Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]18:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
Because of the confusion of these sounds, I've gone ahead and created the suggested article, and moved the Polish example there. — kwami (talk) 21:46, 25 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
It wouldn't be a bad idea to mention Polish here too though. I'm not sure how to mention it, but since there is confusion, I think it's called for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.254.46.251 (talk) 21:17, 24 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Should we make more about the distinction between a truly palatal nasal and an alveolopalatal one? We already mention that Polish and Japanese have the latter, I believe I can find a source that says the same of Italian and Catalan (and possibly other Romance languages). — Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]07:19, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion
I have been wondering for some time now, maybe someone here can help me...
Why do we need a special [ɲ] sound? Isn't this just a [n] followed by [j]? For example, when saying the English words /sin/ and /yes/ together, the sound formed in between is [ɲ]. Or isn't it?
Also, I'm wondering why IPA is inconsistent: there is an [ɲ] sound, but there is no sound for /ch/, even though it's pronounced much faster than [ɲ], and we have to combine two sounds [tʃ], although I'm pretty certain I can say [t] and [ʃ] together without forming the /ch/ sound. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.173.74 (talk) 02:17, 7 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
No, [ɲ] is not the same as [nj]. In [nj], you touch the tip of your tongue to the back of your gums. In [ɲ] you don't.
Yes, you can say [tʃ] without making a ch sound. In Polish you can actually distinguish words that way! That's why, if you want to be precise, you use a tie bar to show they're pronounced as one sound: [t͡ʃ].
As for not having a dedicated letter, they did, once. But that was even more inconsistent: they did not have dedicated letters for other affricates, like [p͡f] and [k͡x].
It's confusing, because there are probably very few languages which distinguish the two, and lots of people transcribe what is really [nʲ] with the letter ⟨ɲ⟩ (unless the palatalization is obvious paradigmatically, as in Irish or Russian). So you can't really rely on the symbols to be distinctive. Theoretically, however, they are. — kwami (talk) 19:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply
I know this section hasn't been updated in nearly 9 years, but I really think the page should provide adequate explanation of how /nj/ and /ɲ/ differ. ThighFish (talk) 22:59, 5 January 2021 (UTC)ThighFishReply
Not needed. "Palatal nasal" is the WP:COMMONNAME. It's also the naming format of all the other WP articles on sonorants use. I mean, we could move the article on [i] to "voiced oral high front unrounded vowel", but there's no need. — kwami (talk) 02:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
You deleted the page that showed the term is ambiguous. There is also voiceless palatal nasal. This is cultural arrogance. You effectively say the voiceless is not worth to be distinguished. For YOUR ears they are the same. This is arrogant, to assume it is the same for everyone. You can put as many stickers "WP:COMMONNAME" here. The term is ambiguous and you acted in bad faith with deleting the page that showed the difference. HTML2011 (talk) 05:37, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Why should this be the only nasal stop to be so distinguished? There are voiceless labial, alveolar, and velar nasals too! Why not specify the voicing of laterals, or rhotics, or vowels, all of which may be voiceless? Why not add "stop" to this article as well, so we know which voiced palatal nasal this is? Why not add "oral" to all the oral consonants? Or "central" to all the ones which are not lateral? We follow WP:COMMONNAME, and [ɲ] is most commonly called the "palatal nasal". WP:TITLE also recommends not being more wordy than necessary. — kwami (talk) 05:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
While we're talking about it, why do we have separate articles on the voiceless sonorants like we do? I think we could provide adequate coverage by merging the voiceless sonorant articles into their (voiced) counterparts. While HTML2011's behavior in this matter is problematic, the logic that a "voiceless" article's counterpart would be a "voiced" one is not that far off. — Ƶ§œš¹[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]17:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Yes, we could merge under the current name. Calling them 'voiced' is common enough, but also understood if they're not dab'd. But we'd want to treat all nasals the name. — kwami (talk) 08:43, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
The common name for one's car may be Ford Focus, but still, in an encyclopedia one would use WP:PRECISION and name the article as precise as needed, e.g. Ford Focus (first generation). The less precise name can be the place for an overview page.
Against. This reflects Anglo-American focus. Features not distinguishable in European languages are not introduced in a significant manor, while those distinguishable in European and American languages (such as voicing of stop, ejectives) are introduced in a significant manor, usually in different articles. --58.83.252.64 (talk) 10:39, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
That doesn't make any sense. First of all, what you're talking about is a Eurocentric bias, not an Anglo-American one. Moreover, voiceless nasals are rare crosslinguistically no matter where you are. There are plenty of non-"European" sounds with their own articles, and many of the examples currently given in the voiceless nasal pages are of European languages. — Ƶ§œš¹[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]11:59, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
A great number of Asian languages (virtually ALL Hmong-Mien and Burman lang. families, the two of the most important lang. families in Asia) use them (I mean m̥, n̥ and ŋ̊; as for [ɳ̊], I don't mind), so it's definitely not rare. However, labiodental stops are really rare - no known language use them, so I propose to merge p̪, b̪ into p, b. --58.83.252.151 (talk) 14:18, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Merge tags removed - it seems that there in consensus that any sound used in a natural language is inherently notable. For those purely theoretical sounds that are not, a merge may be justified. Please suggest a narrower merge proposal involving fewer articles. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Kwami is correct. [ɲ] is the IPA symbol for a palatal nasal. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Cambridge, 1999), page ix. Also at the official site for the IPA. Unicode is not the official source for the IPA, the International Phonetic Association is. And I just looked at the Unicode chart you linked to and there at 0272 is [ɲ], the IPA symbol for a palatal nasal. --Taivo (talk) 12:55, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Don't remove dispute tags, before the dispute is resolved. I cannot read Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Cambridge, 1999), page ix. So I will try to locate your claim in the IPA site. The link you gave doesn't support your claim. HTML2011 (talk) 13:03, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
You will see [ɲ] clearly labeled as "Palatal nasal" in the IPA chart. It absolutely supports the fact that [ɲ] is the IPA symbol for a palatal nasal. Are you actually a linguist? I am and your assertions are simply false. This is not in dispute--[ɲ] is a palatal nasal. If you don't have a copy of the official IPA Handbook, then I doubt your qualifications to claim that there is a dispute here. There simply is none and the web link I've provided to the official site of the IPA is unequivocal. I simply don't understand how you can even think there is a dispute here. --Taivo (talk) 13:07, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Then the "dispute" tag is improperly placed and your comments are misleading. Right above this, you say『Kwamikagami claims that: The palatal nasal is ... in the International Phonetic Alphabet ... is ⟨ ɲ⟩ I don't believe this.』 How else is that to be interpreted? If that is not your dispute, then you need to clearly state your dispute so that your issue can be discussed and addressed. Until you actually have a dispute and actually state it in unambiguous terms that every editor can understand, then leave the dispute tag off. --Taivo (talk) 13:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
A removed one "is" and some dots for you. Can you understand the sentence "The palatal nasal in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ ɲ⟩."? HTML2011 (talk) 13:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
I understood what you wrote even with the extra "is". But that is a true statement, "The palatal nasal in the IPA is [ɲ]". What is your dispute with that? I've provided references to prove it. --Taivo (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
HTML, the chart is the official IPA document. It is indisputable. If you want, I'll provide you with a hundred references to it. Since you don't seem to understand the IPA, then I'll assume that you are not a trained linguist. And if you are getting hyperactive about the, then you have a serious problem with editing Wikipedia and understanding the meaning of English "the". No, [b] is not the "bilabial plosive", it is the "voiced bilabial plosive" since there is a separate symbol for the "voiceless bilabial plosive". But the IPA does not have separate symbols for voiced and unvoiced nasals--one symbol is used for both. Unvoicing (since voicing is the default for nasals) is marked with a diacritic. So "the" palatal nasal symbol is [ɲ]. There is only one symbol for each point of articulation for nasals. --Taivo (talk) 13:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
As Taivo says, voicing is unmarked for nasals in IPA. Devoicing (unvoiced pronunciation of an otherwise voiced segment) is marked with a diacritic (ɲ̥). Not knowing that certainly doesn't disqualify anyone from contributing to Wikipedia, but let's all try to assume good faith and work through disputes or misunderstandings. Cnilep (talk) 11:58, 23 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Cnilep, you are certainly correct that the Unicode annotations are not a proper source for phonetic descriptions. This type of comment, "voiced X nasal" also occurs in a couple of other sources, but the primary body for phonetic symbols is the IPA. We can also see [ɲ] described as simply "palatal nasal" in multiple linguistic descriptions of individual languages without specifying "voiced" before it. --Taivo (talk) 15:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Because we've had repeated confusion of [n̠ʲ] and [ɲ], which is exacerbated by the broad transcription of both with ⟨ɲ⟩, I've created a separate article for alveolo-palatal nasal and moved some of our examples there. I suspect that several of the remaining examples are not true palatals and should be moved as well. Perhaps if we confirm that they are true palatals, we could mention that in the notes, so the reader knows which ones are certain, and which merely assumed?
The two sounds are often confused and descriptions don't necessarily distinguish them such that the distinction is not necessarily verifiable for some of the languages given. I'm not sure what about that would call for two separate articles. — Ƶ§œš¹[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]23:57, 25 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
If a "palatal" sound is coronal, it shouldn't be listed under palatal. But people will insist on adding it. By having a separate article, we can deflect that problem. Or perhaps we can merge it here? — kwami (talk) 00:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
The article doesn't specify that palatals have to be dorsal and says in the lede that "Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex." That implies that other coronal sounds made at the hard palate could be called palatal. If that's not true, it ought to be fixed. — Ƶ§œš¹[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]13:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
"Palatal" is short for dorso-palatal: a dorsal consonant made at the palate. A coronal consonant made at the palate is "retroflex". I think that's explained in the place of articulation article. — kwami (talk) 13:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
One thing we should check up on, is that AFAICT there is no distinction between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar when it comes to non-fricatives. But I don't have a RS for that. — kwami (talk) 18:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
There appears to be a slight inconsistency in this article: the contrast between alveolar-palatal and true palatal nasals is mentioned twice in slightly different ways. I propose to delete the first explanation because it's not cited. At the end of the introductory section:
"The symbol ⟨ ɲ⟩ is used to represent an alveolo-palatal nasal in some languages, since there is no IPA symbol with the latter meaning, and no language distinguishes the two."
This one is after the heading "Occurrence":
"Many languages claimed to have a palatal nasal, such as Portuguese, actually have an alveolo-palatal nasal. This is likely true of several of the languages listed here. There are few languages which contrast the two possibilities, though this does occur in some non-standard dialects of Malayalam.[3]"
Alázhlis (talk) 01:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Yes, and in nearly every other language which has [ndʒ]. Anyway, it wouldn't actually be palatal, unless [dʒ] is palatal, so it's also a bad example. — kwami (talk) 17:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
But believe me, there's no such an allophone of [n] in any of the forms of Armenian, literary or dialectal. The only possible way to utter that sound in Armenian is to be a native Russian speaker trying to speak Armenian, or a kind of a copycat thinking this is the prestige accent - until recently this was considered by many ignorant Armenian-born Russian-speaking Armenians to be very prestigious - to sound as Russian as possible, who, by the way, used to use many Russian features (heavy consonant palatalisation, only velar or palatal [l]'s, no difference between the rhotics, no ejectives and creakies). All the languages of the former Axis of Evil had been undergoing huge Russian linguistic influence till the collapse of the USSR.. --Mahtrqerin (talk) 13:16, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Of course, similar processes are present, let us presume, in all languages, but to various degrees. E.g., velar-fronting may be moderate and hardly detectable as in English, or very heavy, as in Russian. I was talking about foreign-accent speech. Anyway Armenian has no palatal nasal.--Mahtrqerin (talk) 20:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
There should be a distinguishment between the voiceless bilabial plosive and the bilabial plosive. Wikipedia shouldn't merge the articles together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MCTekkit (talk • contribs) 23:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
As an aside, the ref for Italian is to the consonant phoneme table in JIPA's "Illustrations of the IPA" series. That's just no good. I suspect it's the same for French and Spanish. — Lfdder (talk) 21:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Racasens (1990), "The articulatory characteristics of palatal consonants", seems to make the case that all palatal nasals and laterals are alveolo-palatals ("postalveolo-prepalatal"). Either way, I don't think the alveolo-palatal/palatal distinction warranted splitting the article. The phonetic realisation of these consonants doesn't seem to be very well established. — Lfdder (talk) 10:45, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I can get behind having separate tables (though an explanatory note or transcription convention would also do fine), but separate articles is a bit much
Is this "postalveolo-prepalatal" of the current Italian entry here really distinct from the usual "alveolo-palatal" and if so, how? --JorisvS (talk) 12:17, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, it's closer to an alveolo-palatal than a palatal nasal. I'm letting someone else decide which one to keep 'cos I'm not sure about having two articles (see above). — Lfdder (talk) 12:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
But it isn't one... I've removed it from that paged. I don't think that in principle there is anything wrong with having two articles, as long as we're clear about what's what and remain consistent and clear. --JorisvS (talk) 12:37, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, as you see, everything's bunched under 'unclear' right now. Bit counter-intuitive. P.S. Does Ladefoged (2005) actually claim that Hungarian's is a true palatal? Does anyone have that book in hand? — Lfdder (talk) 13:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's not a binary split; there are more than two 'variants'. Right now we've got 1 page that's specifically for alveolo-palatals, and another one for everything else that's to some degree palatal (and Vietnamese that's a laminal alveolar with some sort of palatal release). This is why we shouldn't be improvising. If there's good reason to split up the palatal region, in 100 years time, when the IPA are gonna hold their next symposium, I'm sure that they'll act accordingly. — Lfdder (talk) 14:59, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I know there are more than two. Is 'palatal' the best we have for the overarching category? I can think of "palatalized apical postalveolar", "palatalized laminal postalveolar", "alveolo-palatal", "dorso-palatal" and, maybe, "palatalized laminal alveolar" (Vietnamese?) and something like "dorsal postalveolar" as relevant articulations. Can you think of more? Maybe you're right that it's more prudent to merge the two articles. --JorisvS (talk) 15:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I firmly believe that English contains this sound. Not in an actual word, per se, but in the singsong "nya nya" teasing utterance; it's made retroflex to "slur" the sound for a teasing/spiteful effect. I'd describe it as [ɲʝæ̃ː]. Squirrelous (talk) 21:56, 28 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
As a native English speaker and second-language Spanish speaker of debatable proficiency, I would say that English may or may not contain this sound, and the phrase "nya nya" may or may not contain this sound depending on dialect or other factors. If you do say "nya nya" with a more palatal nasal (rather than the English-typical velar nasal), then I definitely agree it sounds more spiteful, rude, and childish. Saying it with the English-typical velar nasal sound seems like the way a news anchor would quote a 5-year-old who had said this and was being quoted on the news for some reason.
This brings me to my next point: Ctrl-F "English" on this page doesn't find anything. This is English Wikipedia, this is the largest single Wikipedia, and English is a very influential language. I think we should say something about English on this page, if only to point out that the velar nasal is rather clearly the most similar phoneme in normal English. I actually like the idea of also including "nya nya" as an example which may be familiar to many English speakers, but I think we would need a citation. Fluoborate (talk) 20:15, 12 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
I recently edited the page by adding an example of a palatal nasal sound present in the Romanian language, but it got reverted. The sound certainly exists in the Romanian variant spoken in Transylvania, along with other sounds missing from the standard language.
It's one of my first edits I do on Wikipedia, so if the user, JorisvS. , is kind enough to explain the change, it would be really helpful in the future. Shaku91 (talk) 09:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
The problem is that we only have your word for it. To make sure the information is reliable and is not original research, Wikipedia requires reliable sources to accompany the information. This is especially so because Romanian phonology only says『Romanian, however, lacks the palatal consonants /ɲ ʎ/』about [ɲ], nothing else. Don't let this discourage you! If you can find a source, you can restore the Romanian entries accompanied by the reference using <ref>....</ref>, including a link to the information, so that others can verify it. If there any more questions, I'm happen to answer them. --JorisvS (talk) 10:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
This is going to be really challenging as dialectics is really underdeveloped for Romanian and phonological changes are grouped together according to the traditional Romanian historical zones. I will try to find reliable studies on this, but besides some ethnographic descriptions on certain sub-areas, there are no such studies (I am talking about Transylvania, maybe other areas were better researched) as far as my search goes... There are even some curious entries in regards to certain sounds which are actually regional (ʒ in the South versus ʐ).
Might there be any alternative to this? At least some degree of proof by providing entries from dialect dictionaries or the kind? Shaku91 (talk) 10:21, 10 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
I have managed to actually find a French Wikipedia article about a Romanian Linguistic Atlas that also notes non-standard sounds in Romanian dialects: [[3]]. Can I use this as a source? Shaku91 (talk) 08:11, 11 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Self-references to other Wikipedia articles are strictly forbidden. However, if you can dig up the source they've used, that may be sufficient. --JorisvS (talk) 08:59, 11 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
I got a copy of the Romanian Linguistic Atlas (1938) I was mentioning earlier and I will quote it as a source for multiple dialectal sounds in Romanian, as it has thorough phonological explanations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shaku91 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 13 March 2015 (UTC)Reply